Midnight Riot: Peter Grant, Book 1

Probationary constable Peter Grant dreams of being a detective in London's Metropolitan Police. Too bad his superior plans to assign him to the Case Progression Unit, where the biggest threat he'll face is a paper cut. But Peter's prospects change in the aftermath of a puzzling murder, when he gains exclusive information from an eyewitness who happens to be a ghost. Peter's ability to speak with the lingering dead brings him to the attention of Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale....

London Falling: The Shadow Police, Book One

Detective Inspector James Quill is about to complete the drugs bust of his career. Then his prize suspect, Rob Toshack, is murdered in custody. Furious, Quill pursues the investigation, co-opting intelligence analyst Lisa Ross and undercover cops Costain and Sefton. But nothing about Toshack’s murder is normal. Toshack had struck a bargain with a vindictive entity, whose occult powers kept Toshack one step ahead of the law - until his luck ran out. Now, the team must find a 'suspect' who can bend space and time and alter memory itself. And they will kill again.

Fated: Alex Verus Series, Book 1

Alex Verus is part of a world hidden in plain sight, running a magic shop in London. And while Alex's own powers aren't as showy as some mages, he does have the advantage of foreseeing the possible future-allowing him to pull off operations that have a million-to-one-chance of success. But when Alex is approached by multiple factions to crack open a relic from a long-ago mage war, he knows that whatever's inside must be beyond powerful.

The Severed Streets: The Shadow Police, Book Two

Summer in London: a city in turmoil. The vicious murder of a well-known MP is like a match to tinder but Detective Inspector James Quill and his team know that it's not a run-of-the-mill homicide. Still coming to terms with their new-found second sight, they soon discover that what is invisible to others - the killer - is visible to them. Even if they have no idea who it is. Then there are more deaths.

Stiletto: A Novel

When secret organizations are forced to merge after years of enmity and bloodshed, only one person has the fearsome powers - and the bureaucratic finesse - to get the job done. Facing her greatest challenge yet, Rook Myfanwy Thomas must broker a deal between two bitter adversaries: the Checquy - the centuries-old covert British organization that protects society from supernatural threats, and the Grafters - a centuries-old supernatural threat.

Who Killed Sherlock Holmes?: The Shadow Police, Book Three

The ghost of Sherlock Holmes is dead, but who will solve his murder? The Great Detective's ghost has walked London's streets for an age, given shape by people's memories. Now someone's put a ceremonial dagger through his chest. But what's the motive? And who - or what - could kill a ghost? When policing London's supernatural underworld, eliminating the impossible is not an option. DI James Quill and his detectives have learnt this the hard way.

Magic Binds: Kate Daniels, Book 9

Mercenary Kate Daniels knows all too well that magic in post-Shift Atlanta is a dangerous business. But nothing she's faced could have prepared her for this.... Kate and the former Beast Lord Curran Lennart are finally making their relationship official. But there are some steep obstacles standing in the way of their walk to the altar.... Kate's father, Roland, has kidnapped the demigod Saiman and is slowly bleeding him dry in his never-ending bid for power.

The Purloined Poodle

Thanks to his relationship with the ancient Druid Atticus O'Sullivan, Oberon the Irish wolfhound knows trouble when he smells it - and furthermore, he knows he can handle it. When he discovers that a prizewinning poodle has been abducted in Eugene, Oregon, he learns that it's part of a rash of hound abductions all over the Pacific Northwest. Since the police aren't too worried about dogs they assume have run away, Oberon knows it's up to him to track down those hounds and reunite them with their humans. For justice! And gravy!

The Rook: A Novel

Myfanwy Thomas awakes in a London park surrounded by dead bodies. With her memory gone, her only hope of survival is to trust the instructions left in her pocket by her former self. She quickly learns that she is a Rook, a high-level operative in a secret agency that protects the world from supernatural threats. But there is a mole inside the organization - and this person wants her dead.

Demon Moon: Prof Croft, Book 1

Show me an amateur conjurer, and I'll stop him before he gets himself killed. That's the idea, anyway. But New York City isn't what it used to be, and I don't mean the recent crash. Amateur casters are calling up creatures they shouldn't be able to. And there's been a murder at the city's most hallowed cathedral, a message in blood on the victim's back the NYPD wants me to interpret, like yesterday.

Once Broken Faith: October Daye, Book 10

Politics have never been October "Toby" Daye's strong suit. When she traveled to the Kingdom of Silences to prevent them from going to war with her home, the Kingdom of the Mists, she wasn't expecting to return with a cure for elf-shot and a whole new set of political headaches. Now the events she unwittingly set in motion could change the balance of modern Faerie forever, and she has been ordered to appear before a historic convocation of monarchs. Naturally, things have barely gotten underway when the first dead body shows up.

Stone and a Hard Place: The Alastair Stone Chronicles, Book 1

It's hard enough for Alastair Stone to keep his two lives - powerful mage and mundane Occult Studies professor - separate without an old friend asking him to take on a new apprentice. Especially after a university colleague wants him to investigate a massive old house for things that go bump in the night. Still, Stone figures it's an easy job: just turn up, put on a little show, and announce that the house is clean. Only it isn't. A malevolent spirit is reawakening in the basement.

Curse on the Land: Soulwood, Book 2

Before Nell Ingram met skinwalker Jane Yellowrock, she had no one to rely on, finding strength only in her arcane connection to the dark woods around her. But now she has friends in the newly formed PsyLED team to keep her grounded - even if being part of the agency responsible for policing paranormals comes with dangers of its own.

Monster Hunter Memoirs: Grunge

When marine private Oliver Chadwick Gardenier is killed in the marine barrack bombing in Beirut, somebody who might be Saint Peter gives him a choice: Go to heaven, which, while nice, might be a little boring, or return to earth. The Boss has a mission for him, and he's to look for a sign. He's a marine: He'll choose the mission. Unfortunately, the sign he's to look for is "57". Which, given the food services contract in Bethesda Hospital, creates some difficulty. Eventually it appears that God's will is for Chad to join a group called Monster Hunters International.

Dark Magic: Harbinger P.I., Book 3

Zombies on Main Street. Not my finest moment. The police aren't exactly thrilled with me, but when a cold case heats up and starts to stink of the supernatural, suddenly the sheriff is in my office offering me a job. When the case hits boiling point, I'm dealing with monsters, black magic, and ritual killings. I even have to call on the two craziest witches in town for help. Things must be bad if the Blackwell sisters are my only hope for survival. Maybe I've bitten off more than I can chew.

Rogues

Demon Accords number 10. When a hunter is brutally mauled in northern Maine, it's presumed that a black bear is the killer. But an astute local deputy suspects a more supernatural element. His call for assistance is answered by the supernatural community sending one of their very best. If it takes a thief to catch a thief, who do you use to catch a werewolf? But nothing is ever simple in the preternatural world. There's more here than meets the eye... nose... ear... or fang.

No Good Dragon Goes Unpunished: Heartstrikers, Book 3

When Julius overthrew his mother and took control of his clan, he thought he was doing right by everyone. But sharing power isn't part of any proper dragon's vocabulary, and with one seat still open on the new ruling council, all of Heartstriker is ready to do whatever it takes to get their claws on it, including killing the Nice Dragon who got them into this mess in the first place.

Lost Soul: Harbinger P.I., Book 1

I'm the guy you come to when your spouse gets bitten by a werewolf, or your honey is kidnapped by a demon. I'm the guy who knows how to save you from an evil curse or angry vampire. At least, I was that guy until the Society of Shadows sent me to Dearmont, Maine, a sleepy town that had a zero rating on the supernatural occurrences scale. But when a woman hires me to find out if her son has been possessed by a demon at a rich kids' party, Dearmont goes from zero to hero.

The Atrocity Archives: A Laundry Files Novel

Bob Howard is a computer-hacker desk jockey, who has more than enough trouble keeping up with the endless paperwork he has to do on a daily basis. He should never be called on to do anything remotely heroic. But for some reason, he is.

God Touched: The Demon Accords, Book 1

Chris Gordon is a rookie with the NYPD - one with a secret. In his spare time Chris is an exorcist without equal, with a gift from God. But when he saves a beatiful girl from a demonic attack, he discovers there is more to fear than just demons. Finding himself surrounded by vampires and were-weasels and facing a giant short-faced bear, Chris struggles to stay alive, all while protecting his deadly new girlfriend. And then there's her overprotective vampire mother!

The Utterly Uninteresting and Unadventurous Tales of Fred, the Vampire Accountant

Timid, socially awkward, and plagued by self-esteem issues, Fred has never been the adventurous sort. One fateful night - different from the night he died, which was more inconvenient than fateful - Fred reconnects with an old friend at his high school reunion. This rekindled relationship sets off a chain of events thrusting him right into the chaos of the parahuman world.

Buried Memory: Harbinger P.I., Book 2

Whoever said that nothing ever happens in a small town clearly never visited Dearmont, Maine. It's getting hotter than hell around here. When the dead start crawling out of their graves, you know something's up. If there's one thing I hate more than zombies, it's having my memories erased by magic. That's a real bummer, right? So when I get a chance to break the spell that's locked away part of my mind, I take it, even if it means dabbling with ancient Egyptian sorcery. Big mistake.

The Accidental Alchemist

Unpacking her belongings in her new hometown of Portland, Oregon, herbalist and reformed alchemist Zoe Faust can't help but notice she's picked up a stowaway. Dorian Robert-Houdin is a living, breathing three-and-half-foot gargoyle - not to mention a master of French cuisine - and he needs Zoe's expertise to decipher a centuries-old text. Zoe, who's trying to put her old life behind her, isn't so sure she wants to reopen her alchemical past... until the dead man on her porch leaves her no choice.

The Fall of the House of Cabal: The Johannes Cabal Novels, Book 6

Johannes Cabal, a necromancer of some little infamy, has come into possession of a vital clue that may lead him to his ultimate goal: a cure for death. The path is vague, however, and certainly treacherous as it takes him into strange territories that, quite literally, no one has ever seen before. The task is too dangerous to venture upon alone, so he must seek assistance - comrades for the coming travails.

Publisher's Summary

I was my dad's vinyl-wallah: I changed his records while he lounged around, and that's how I know my Argo from my Tempo. And it's why, when Dr Walid called me to the morgue to listen to a corpse, I recognized the tune it was playing. Something violently supernatural had happened to the victim, strong enough to leave its imprint like a wax cylinder recording. Cyrus Wilkinson, part-time jazz saxophonist and full-time accountant, had apparently dropped dead of a heart attack just after finishing a gig in Soho.

He wasn't the first. No one was going to let me exhume corpses to see if they were playing my tune, so it was back to old-fashioned legwork, starting in Soho, the heart of the scene. I didn't trust the lovely Simone, Cyrus' ex-lover, professional jazz kitten and as inviting as a Rubens' portrait, but I needed her help. There were monsters stalking Soho, creatures feeding off that special gift that separates the great musician from someone who can raise a decent tune, taking beauty and leaving behind sickness, failure and broken lives. And as I hunted them, my investigation got tangled up in another story: a brilliant trumpet player, Richard 'Lord' Grant - my father - who managed to destroy his own career, twice. That's the thing about policing: most of the time you're doing it to maintain public order. Occasionally you're doing it for justice. And maybe once in a career, you're doing it for revenge.

I enjoyed this even more than the first in the series, and now I'm hanging out for Book 3. I found the action a little easier to follow (maybe that's because I have got a bit better control over my iPod now... though I can't make it stop replaying the last half hour of any session whenever I switch it on!) and a lot of things from Book One suddenly made sense. Peter is an interesting character with a good deal of tolerance for the "different", though not a lot for the "ethically challenged". Back story for Nightingale, Molly and Richard "Lord" Grant slides seamlessly into the current action. Excellent work, Messers Aaronovitch and Holdbrook-Smith.

I came across this book/series by accident but it is a terrific listen. such wonderful imagination combining the geography of London, the mundane details of police procedure and magic. The book moves between humour, tragedy and compassion so one has little idea what is coming next. The narrator is pitch perfect accents are spot on and makes the street references of modern London speech that much more pertinent. Enthralling, looking forward to the next book and I have yet to finish this current book.

Both this and the previous effort by Ben Aaronovitch were excellent fun books to read but were made even better by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith's narrations.
He does multiple characterisations effortlessly without sounding corny and this adds to a sense of involvement in the story which with Aaronovitch's descriptions, make you feel you are watching rather than listening.

If you’ve listened to books by Ben Aaronovitch before, how does this one compare?

I've thoroughly enjoyed the first book in the series and couldn't wait for the follow-up. It was a fun listen and I really loved the jazzy parts of it. The humor I so loved in the first book was still there but a bit dampened. The love scenes were sizzling and sassy, who would not like to spent an afternoon rolling in the hay with Peter Grant?

Was Moon Over Soho worth the listening time?

Yes, it was

Any additional comments?

Now I'm going to listen to the third one, hope it meets my expectations!

Being an Australian resident I can't get anymore than #4 of the Dresden Files on Audible and after having 'Rivers of London' recommended by the good blokes at Pulp Fiction I discovered that book 2 of the series was available. Hooray! I love an author who can bring a city to life, now I really want to revisit London. I have been thoroughly enjoying the afternoon listening to Kobna do a mighty job with all the voices and all the accents.

Its books like this that make me happy to try new authors, the delight you experience when you realise there another one by "that guy who did..." doesn't occur often enough. This is the second Rivers of London novel and its as much fun as the first .

Hopefully Ben Aaronovitch will continue with this series (I suspect there are enough "story arcs" (as American TV writers like to say) left open to work with) as the characters are entertaining and enjoyable.

I hope Kobna Holdbrook Smith continues to narrate as he is now "the voice" for these books in my head.

22 of 22 people found this review helpful

Jane

Sheffield, United Kingdom

7/26/11

Overall

"Perfect audiobook"

This comes as close to perfection in an audiobook as I think it's possible to get. The mix of wry observation about everyday policing in London combined with a clever supernatural storyline is brilliant. And the narrator is fantastic. His dry, deadpan delivery works well both for the comic one-liners and for the action sequences. In fact, I suspect that I would not enjoy this book so much on the page because it would lack Kobna Holdbrook-Smith's timing and character voicing. Great stuff.

38 of 39 people found this review helpful

Edwina

Exeter, United Kingdom

8/10/11

Overall

"Very entertaining"

Having not long finished 'Rivers of London', I was delighted to see 'Moon over Soho' as an audio book. Kobna Holdbrook-Smith is a perfect narrator and the plot is entertaining and tight. A very, very enjoyable listen.

11 of 11 people found this review helpful

Mr. A. Garlick

South Yorkshire, UK

8/9/11

Overall

"Great again"

A brilliant second novel, written and read perfectly. Keep this combination up because its magic!

11 of 11 people found this review helpful

Jan

London, United Kingdom

10/29/11

Overall

"And it's as good as the first"

Always a worry when you have enjoyed a first book a lot - "Can the second match it?" This does and sent me back to re-listen to Rivers of London as great detail that I missed first time round. Looking forward to listening to this again shortly.

8 of 8 people found this review helpful

Philip

North Walshm, United Kingdom

8/18/11

Overall

"Fantastic, bring on the next!"

I knew I shouldn't have bought this so soon after it was released, now i've got to wait ages for the next one! Needless to say it's brilliant! Great book, fantastic narration.

8 of 8 people found this review helpful

Fiona

London, United Kingdom

10/26/11

Overall

"Great Sequel"

I really enjoyed the first book and this sequel did not disappoint. Takes off exactly where the other left off and is ripe for another. I really hope there is more. I do love the Policing / London angle, which is the bit I thought would be least attractive to me (not liking police dramas in the least), but the Ben Aaronovitch merges magic with the everyday brilliantly.

Really great narration by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith. Every character is brought to life with their own 'voice'.

Extremely entertaining! Fingers crossed there is more coming.

6 of 6 people found this review helpful

Sally

Newport, United Kingdom

10/13/11

Overall

"Promising follow up to Rivers of London"

This series is really starting to develop. It's not perfect yet, the characters are still bedding in as we get drawn into the world of magic, but the plot is complex and thought provoking. I have no interest in jazz but still enjoyed those elements of the story.
I originally started reading this series expecting a sort of British Harry Dresden but this is very different and very British. I am looking forward to the third in the series next year.

5 of 5 people found this review helpful

Seppo

Espoo, Finland

10/16/12

Overall

"Body and Soul - and all that Jazz"

Excellent reader that Kobna Holbrook-Smith. Catches the spirit of the main character and the book spot on!

This second book, as the title hints, takes place in Soho. The author juggles effortlessly with multiple strands of plots from jazz to horror cabinets and the history of british practitioners.

In the first book everything was new, fresh and exciting. Often it is not easy to raise stakes and still keep it tight but Aaronovitch handles it splendidly!

4 of 4 people found this review helpful

Terry

Basildon, United Kingdom

10/7/11

Overall

"An interesting and unusual read"

When I first decided to buy this book I was a little apprehensive as I usually opt for the more traditional sci fi novels. However I was really pleased.

The book is well written and the narration is great adding atmosphere to the audio book.

If you know the UK you will be happy to know that lots of different places streets etc are mentioned, this helps to build the overall picture in your mind and adds to the enjoyment.

Great Book.

4 of 4 people found this review helpful

Report Inappropriate Content

If you find this review inappropriate and think it should be removed from our site, let us know. This report will be reviewed by Audible and we will take appropriate action.